


Foundations

by MayCSB



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-15 16:55:15
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,979
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13617636
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MayCSB/pseuds/MayCSB
Summary: Everything has a beginning and an end. For FP and Alice, it began and ended in pain.





	Foundations

_I don't wanna leave you lonely_

_But I've run out of love this time_

_You know that I adore you_

_Though I couldn't give enough_

_Hope you’ll be safe in the arms of another_

_‘Cause I can’t take the weight of your love_

**_\- Lewis Capaldi, Lost on You_ **

 

There was a house on top of the hill. 

It had been abandoned for decades. 

It sat on a bed of thorns.

Those thorns had names and faces, bodies and souls, and occupied every room of its expanse. 

 

* * *

 

She’d been kicked out of her house for the third time that month, by a 300-pound troglodyte her mother called “sweetheart”. He’d chased her off the property with a swinging bat and a slew of profanities, his meaty arms searching the air for her small body, swinging, swinging, until she’d ran so far her feet throbbed and her face was sticky with sweat.

She stared at the sky and prayed for divine guidance, knowing well and surely that in that tiny town, the only one who might help her was god. 

But he didn’t, and so she kept walking.

She knew where she was going but couldn’t admit it to herself, not then. She walked towards the house on the hill, and hoped she’d be safe.  

She wouldn’t remember much about that night but she would remember the boy who gave her his last sip of water and told her to lie down on his mattress.

 

* * *

 

She married Hal because she had to. She married Hal because she was a pregnant nineteen-year old with no family and no home and no options, and she married Hal because he was solid. 

He was everything she always needed and never had. 

As she said yes to him, under the watchful eye of his family and priest, she could feel the burning gaze of the boy she loved, standing still by the last pew in the church, knowing that losing her would linger in his bones for the rest of his days. 

She looked back at him as she and Hal walked out the church and for the first time in her life, Alice Cooper née Peabody, hesitated. 

 

* * *

 

When she woke up, he was right there beside her. He smiled at her and offered his canteen, nodding when she got it from him. 

It had been far too dark for her to notice the night before, but then, in the warm light of the morning sun, she could see the depth of his eyes and the shape of his face and thought, briefly, that he looked like her uncle Sam, the only person who ever loved her. 

“Who are you?” She asked, and it felt strange to ask, because even though she’d only met him the night before, it was like she’d known him all her life. 

“I’m FP. I found you outside last night remember? You got lost.” He smiled 

“Oh, I...” she exhaled “I didn’t get lost. I was kicked out.” She sat up, rubbing her face, wanting too badly to disappear completely “My mother’s boyfriend wasn’t a big fan of my habit of calling 911 when he hit her.” 

“He sounds nice.” He chuckled “I’m no stranger to shitty families.” he told her, with a kind nod “This isn’t the best place but it beats community housing. You’re welcome to stay.”

She desperately wanted to say no but knew it was her best and only option, and so, for the first time in what would be a series of hundreds, Alice decided to stay.

 

* * *

 

She knew Hal didn’t believe her when she said the baby was his. He wasn’t the sharpest but was no idiot, but for those seven months from the time she told him to the night she gave birth, they both played dumb. 

She gave birth on a warm spring night, at a hospital close enough to be comfortable but just distant enough to not be known by the entire town within the hour. It was a boy, a loud, gorgeous baby boy, and she would remember, every single day for the rest of her life, the contrast between the wave of pure love she felt when they first placed him in her arms and the coldness that pierced her soul after the social worker took him away. Hal had organised the papers and called social services, spoken to her doctors and made decisions. He didn’t consult her and didn’t dare walk into her room or look her in the eyes.  

She would hate him forever for that reason alone.

 

* * *

 

She first felt safe, truly safe with him, when he took to sleeping on the floor by her mattress (his mattress, which he insisted she take because he “slept better on the floor anyway”) solely so he could shake her awake whenever she had one of her bad nightmares. 

For one month, two weeks and five days, Alice sat on that mattress and looked out the window, walked around that huge house and marvelled at its disrepair, saw families with nowhere else to go, saw elderly people alone with their thoughts, saw lost children, children like herself. She never saw junkies or criminals, never saw the people she had so long believed resided in that house. Instead, she saw unlucky people, sick people, people who never had anything and yet lost everything they had.

She didn’t leave the house once during that period. FP brought her food and water, offered to help her find a job, asked her what she needed. He didn’t press and he didn’t ask.  

She would remember, all those years later, that the day she finally understood that he was someone she could count on, was a Tuesday. 

He’d brought her a burger from Pop’s (light mustard, no ketchup) and a huge soda for them to share, and she listened as he told her about his day, told her of the guys who were working construction with him and the new stoplight they would be placing on West Mulberry. She nodded and laughed, mindlessly, hoping he wouldn't notice her mind racing a mile a minute. 

He did. 

“What’s on your mind, Al?” he asked, eyeing her up and down

“Nothing.” she lied “I’m fine.” 

“You’re a pretty shitty liar for an abused kid.” he said “Tell me what’s wrong.”  

“Besides everything?”

“Yes, besides that.” 

“I need my things,” she said “I need my clothes and my books. I want my things.” she continued “If I’m going to stay here…”

“Where else would you go?” he asked, looking at the wall “You have to stay, Al. It’s safe for you here.” 

“I know.” she told him, moving her hand to rest above his

“They at your place?” he asked “Your mother’s place?”

“Yeah,” she responded, chewing on her lower lip “they’re there.”

“You wanna go get them?”

“What?” 

“I’ll go with you. Make sure everything’s okay.” 

“Are you sure?”  

“Let’s go.” 

 

* * *

 

It wasn’t too bad, at first. Hal was nice, loved her, and could give her everything she needed. His parents gave them a nice little house as a wedding gift and stepped down from their management positions at the town’s little newspaper, and Alice and Hal took over. 

She liked the stability, liked having dinner every night by eight and liked her work at the paper. She didn’t like that Hal had a temper, that he was sometimes violent, that the stability she felt was only skin deep. 

She didn’t like that he would force her to have sex with him, didn’t like that he threw out her birth control, didn’t like that seemed to disdain everything she was or did. 

But Polly came, and then Betty, and Hal was suddenly just an afterthought. Alice Cooper dedicated her days and nights to being a mom to those little girls, she cooked and cleaned and tied countless pigtails, she packed lunchboxes and told stories, sang nursery rhymes and kissed scrapped knees. And at night, when Hal told her she was stupid and cheap, she would close her eyes and think of her babies. 

 

* * *

 

“We’re here,” she told him, coming to a stop in front of her mother’s house “this is home.” 

“You want me to come in with you?” he asked her 

“No,” she took his hand and gave it a light squeeze “I’ll be okay. He’s probably not home.”  

He watched as she climbed the steps to the front porch, withdrew her key from her coat and unlocked the door, slipping inside the house with the quiet quality of a child who’s learned to make herself invisible. 

It was perhaps five minutes later that he heard her desperate screams, the smashing of things, and repeated shouts of “stop, stop”. 

It took him approximately one hundred and thirteen seconds to break the red front door down and run toward her voice, racing feet accompanying racing mind.  

He found her in what he assumed was her bedroom, pinned to the ground by a gigantic man who punched her repeatedly as he yelled in her face.  

If you were to ask FP, years later, how he managed to push him off her and pin him down, he’d brush it off to sheer luck and the element of surprise. 

“Al, get out of here!” he shouted, struggling to keep the man down “Go! Now!”  

And so she went, ran out of that house again, and prayed to god he’d be okay. 

 

* * *

 

The night Betty was born, Alice received a delivery of orange tulips to her hospital room. The delivery boy said the sender didn’t leave a name, but she knew who they were from. 

By then, she hadn’t seem him in four years, since the day she married Hal.  

She had wanted to call him, many times. She’d wanted to call him when she had his baby, when she gave it away. She wanted to call him the first time Hal called her a “cheap slut” and threw a shoe at her. She wanted to call him the second time he did it. She wanted to call him the seventh and last time he did that, when she grabbed his neck and showed him who he was dealing with, just like FP had taught her all those years ago.

She wanted to call him every time the hole he left in her soul filled her entire existence. 

She wanted to call and tell him all the things she was never brave enough to say.  

She wanted to call and thank him for remembering her favourite flowers. 

She wanted to call and ask him to take her away. 

She never did. 

 

* * *

 

Forsythe Pendleton Jones was not, as many people would have you believe, a violent man. But as he looked at the sorry figure beneath him, and threw punch after punch after punch, revelling in his pain and enjoying his suffering, he became one. 

It was only by sheer luck that the man didn’t die that night. 

He left after he was certain he had delivered his message, carrying a purple duffel bag he’d stuffed with all the clothes he could find, plus a small stuffed toy he saw on the bed and most of the books on the bookshelf by the door. 

When he left, the man was still on the floor, blood coating every inch of his face. 

He found Alice sitting by the road half a mile from her mother’s house, the brokenness in her face breaking his heart. 

She sobbed as he held her to his chest, and once she was done, he took her by the hand and led her back to the house on the hill, their home, and watched her as she slept through the night and into the morning. 

He fell asleep by her side. 

When she woke up, in his arms, she would remember thinking that she had never felt so safe. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
